I’m sure there’s absolutely nothing untoward around the motivations for this, especially with the ‘get back to the office’ narrative that insinuates WFH is ‘lazy, workshy’ etc.
If someone is able to work with reasonable adjustments (whether that’s working from home or adjustments in the office) then there’s no reason why they shouldn’t.
The difficulty is ensuring that those who truly cannot have their disabilities accommodated aren’t unfairly penalised, but many people with disabilities probably could work quite adequately with the right support.
The Tories are a party of self important insufferable middle managers
Depends on the disability. I’m sure many people with disabilities want to work and want contribute so they can feel valued along with everyone else rather than being treated as different. No reason why they can’t or shouldn’t work.
This presumes employers will want to take on the disabled who often cannot reliably commit to fixed hours
It’s a myth that voters are into this kind of thing, if that were the case Tory polling would be sky-high right now.
The reality is that most voters don’t really care one way or another, until it happens to them of course.
I doubt there are that many WFH jobs available, especially for the disabled who have no experience.
This is mental. The gov is trying to force the whole admin side of the Civil Service back into the office, costing its staff masses of money in travel and the tax payer more money as its going to have to re open or re acquire more office space to make the physically happen. Basically trying to take the CS back to the 90s
And on the other the gov suddenly supports WFH for other types of people.
They will try, but they cant have it both ways
The sad truth is that a lot of people are unemployable to modern employers. Things have gotten a lot worse the last decade as every single job seems to be about your ability to socialise, market youself, and suck up to the boss. You can’t just get a job, do it well, and be left alone. On the other side of the coin employers and fellow employees shouldn’t have to put up with unreliable or unstable colleagues that place further strain on them. Nothing about this is good for businesses, profits, workers, or mental health. The benefit system is tortorous by design and no one employable stays in it for long.
Seems strange for wartime spirit being involved by the political party responsible for the vast majority of problems this country currently faces
It’s really not that easy to get a WFH job, especially if you’re disabled and have limited experience. After four years of applying I’ve now got a job where one of my reasonable adjustments is that I’m allowed to WFH one day a week. Just the one. Obviously this would not be very useful for those who are so disabled they can’t leave the house at all.
Most entry level jobs are not work from home friendly. I worked an in-person job, on my feet for 8 hours a day, for three years in order to get the experience I needed for this job. Many couldn’t do that.
Why doesn’t the government do it’s duty to help people live happy and productive lives?
Why the focus on endlessly penalising everyone into submission.
Some people would be able to, some wouldn’t. Blanket policies like this are cruel, unfair and poorly thought out.
Trying. It’s not easy getting a remote job. I can only work part time outside of the home.
As a disabled person myself this hit home for me I have mixed feelings. I developed epilepsy after a fall a couple of years ago, currently I have a bad seizure at least once a week. My work have had to drop my working pattern from 5 days a week to 3 to accommodate my recovery time. My concern is I am still able to work but I’m earning 60% of what I was prior to the epilepsy, I’m also a burden on my work due to the unpredictable nature of my epilepsy and if I was ever to lose this job I can’t see any work place passing my probation as I’m a liability vs a non disabled worker. Tricky cause I’m able to work but also not very employable due to my disability. The stress of this also can cause my epilepsy to be worse so whilst I’m more than happy working health wise id probably be much better off being supported by the government and not working although I imagine id eventually lose my mind to boredom.
Ninja edit: I’m aware I can’t be sacked for things relating to my disability even whilst on probation but the reality is within your first two years you can be fired for whatever reason they like without any recourse.
So on one hand they want Civil Servants to come into the office but people who are unemployed should work from home. Make it make sense.
I wish I could, because I would love to be able to work again. My problem is that due to pain and other problems, I often have nights with hardly any or no sleep, and often have to sleep during the day. How can someone so as me ‘contribute’ if I have to ring my boss nearly every (other) day to say that I have had a bad night, and can’t work today? I don’t think that there are any bosses that would be able to put up with that.
They don’t have a duty, fuck off. The government has shown little to no duty to them.
The Tories want nothing more than for every individual to be worked like cattle, whilst they get to live in luxury. Nothing but heartless bastards.
Sounds great in theory. Unlikely to be administered with anything approaching consistency or compassion, more likely the blanket application of rules without any reference to individual situations.
Companies must employ disabled people and properly work with newly disabled employees in order to do their duty. The health service must properly diagnose and treat chronic illness in a timely fashion to ensure people can keep their jobs.
There. Fixed that for you.
When working habits changed because of the pandemic and more people started to WFH – the Government were dead against it. Then the penny dropped they could turn WFH into a home based poor house. They are properly despicable.
Yeah I love villifying the disabled. We should send them downt he mines, really.
Ahh yes, that famous Nelson quote: “England expects that every disabled person work from home to do their duty”.
Can’t wait for forced remote shelf-stacking to be a thing.
I’m sure that more people would work from home by choice if more opportunities to do so were available. A lot of companies that have work that can absolutely be done from home still insist on forcing people into an office though, so there would need to be some incentive to change that dynamic.
I’m not overly convinced that this government is the right one to push that though, given that mates of Tories are the ones that own a lot of office buildings which is why they went into a full on meltdown over people working from home during the pandemic.
Disabled people gotta do their duty for the country, but politicians’ only duty is to their paymasters.
My partner is disabled and is struggling to find a job that isn’t heavy lifting full stop. Ministers saying this doesn’t mean anything at all because they’re clearly not going to create a million let alone 100 WFH jobs for the disabled to do.
I’d gladly work from home it’s just finding a job, not a lot wants to hire those with disabilities, I’ve always been told not to mention it
It’d be good if these twats done a bit instead of just making speeches an stupid comments
I try to be balanced but this is just scummy as fuck, no details on any support to help people get to work, just threats and nationalist rhetoric.
This could be done in such a good way, help people get into work and have a better life but for them it has to be about punishment.
Stuff doesn’t normally get to me but this really has, fuck them and anyone who votes for them
Hey maybe the government could do their duty and stop being a bunch of incompetent scape goating con artists.
So are the government for WFH or against it? Or just when it suits the culture war of the week.
*Do your Duty*?
I can see that over a camp gate in the near future, what planet are these people on?
We’re having enough trouble finding things for fully able-bodied and neurotypical people to do these days, and it’s only going to get worse as more firms notice that ChatGPT *et al* is cheaper than a real person even if the quality of the work it does is barely-acceptable shite. What’s even the *point* of this, besides punching down on an easy target?
I used to employ a disabled man who had unpredictable energy / pain levels. He’d be able to work all day some days, not for days on end, for a few hours at a time. The particular job was suitable for adhoc workload.
That company went bust, and now the chap has found it impossible to find something else.
Realistically, most companies expect defined hours. The state either needs to incentivise flexible working for those with chronic illnesses as described, or needs to offer jobs themselves.
Whenever one calls HMRC there’s a huge queue – surely it would be better to offer jobs to those in the situation I’ve described. The worst that can happen is that they’re unavailable, which puts the queues in no worse position than they currently are 🤷♂️
typical Tory attack. Have a go at the disabled, immigrants and whatever group but never the rich who can afford accountants to make sure they pay little or no tax. Also appealing to the daily mail readers who regard anyone on benefits as a total waster and drain on the economy. When you will one of the lunatics propose lowering the school.leaving age to 8 to “help the economy and do their duty” This government is rapidly passing right wing and heading towards full blown fascism.
And what about people whose conditions fluctuate? What if you could do the job assigned to you on Monday, but Tuesday and Wednesday you were not well enough? What if that happened every single week (on different days, obviously)? What would an employer be expected to do about an employee who genuinely could not guarantee they would be fit for work at any given time?
So what happens when a person cannot afford to spend the money on the technology required to attend interviews remotely? What if they are living in rented accommodation and the lease bans them from working there? What about the people who are living in areas where the infrastructure is not good enough to support remote working? This is a terrible policy.
I don’t understand the governments position on this? They’re trying to force people back to the office AND then force disabled people to work (from home).
Either they’re stupid and inept and don’t realise there is an election looming or they’re just trying to piss absolutely everyone off. What is their end goal with all this? Because it certainly isn’t going to garner them votes, it’ll make them lose them. They’re not benefitting the masses and they’re not even benefitting themselves at this point. So strange…
Alright then I’ll bite, where are all the work from home jobs for the disabled – especially for those who have been out of work for a long long time or possibily never been in work.
Most jobs available to those with no work history are largely heavy manual work, shift work, driving work – all jobs which are going to be totally unsuitable for people claiming disability benefits who can’t work. People aren’t just going to walk into a job as an accountant or software engineer or a management role from home like that!
A lot of people who have worked who have mobility issues often did plenty of heavy manual work throughout their lives and are in their late 50s and now paying the price…
Also which categories of disabled people does this utter idiot think needs to “do their duty”? Where do we draw the line? Those with asbestosis and serious COPD? The terminally ill? People with learning difficulties? Non verbal adults with the mental age of infants?
As for those who want these people “in the office” or even in other workplaces, I take it they you will support laws to make them excempt from disciplinaries / dismissal if they keep going off sick or are regularly in hospitals and ensure all public transport runs 24/7 fully staffed with no barriers to access… (funny how the same Tories wanting the disabled in workplaces also want to axe all railway staff, cut the motability scheme and have crushed the bus network).
I will say that the WFH culture has started giving rise to these ‘well you can still work?’ discussions to even more able-bodied people. There’s no such thing as snow days anymore when your office is at home, inconvenient illnesses that don’t incapacitate you aren’t really great excuses anymore for not working – good at excusing yourself from the office these days but not anything else.
Even on training courses and conferences, you can be asked to keep your laptop with you in case you need to do some emailing etc. Great for management I suppose. We’re on the verge of being thrown out of our office with no replacement except for plant personnel and for the people that regularly come in the office, they’ll have to be dragged out kicking and screaming. Plant people loathe that WFH’ers have the flexibility to do stuff they can’t like putting the car in the garage, going shopping, literally any other irl stuff people these days love about working from home.
You can’t do that when you are that someone who needs to turn a valve or repair a bit of kit.
Make more remote working jobs available for the disabled then you bitch!
The only jobs they will have for WFH is call centre type jobs, am sure they will find some 1 armed person somewhere that can put a headset on their head and type one handed and say something like, this person is disabled and can do it so can everyone else.
Though I am quite sure they will make it sound so much more exciting to their SS style clientele.
‘Work from home’ isn’t just laying around with a laptop doing data entry. Most work from home jobs are still intense customer service type call centre roles that require you to be sitting at a desk 8 hours (or longer), using various complicated systems across multiple monitors. Plus you have to be meeting strict targets, remembering scripts and policies and dealing with complaints in a stressful fast paced environment.
Oh and you have to do that 5 days a week.
You can’t just assume that because a job is done at home that it can be done easily. I really think by ‘disability’ these people think it’s a case of being unable to walk or drive to an office and forgetting the sheer range and severity of different disabilities people suffer from.
44 comments
I’m sure there’s absolutely nothing untoward around the motivations for this, especially with the ‘get back to the office’ narrative that insinuates WFH is ‘lazy, workshy’ etc.
If someone is able to work with reasonable adjustments (whether that’s working from home or adjustments in the office) then there’s no reason why they shouldn’t.
The difficulty is ensuring that those who truly cannot have their disabilities accommodated aren’t unfairly penalised, but many people with disabilities probably could work quite adequately with the right support.
The Tories are a party of self important insufferable middle managers
Depends on the disability. I’m sure many people with disabilities want to work and want contribute so they can feel valued along with everyone else rather than being treated as different. No reason why they can’t or shouldn’t work.
This presumes employers will want to take on the disabled who often cannot reliably commit to fixed hours
It’s a myth that voters are into this kind of thing, if that were the case Tory polling would be sky-high right now.
The reality is that most voters don’t really care one way or another, until it happens to them of course.
I doubt there are that many WFH jobs available, especially for the disabled who have no experience.
This is mental. The gov is trying to force the whole admin side of the Civil Service back into the office, costing its staff masses of money in travel and the tax payer more money as its going to have to re open or re acquire more office space to make the physically happen. Basically trying to take the CS back to the 90s
And on the other the gov suddenly supports WFH for other types of people.
They will try, but they cant have it both ways
The sad truth is that a lot of people are unemployable to modern employers. Things have gotten a lot worse the last decade as every single job seems to be about your ability to socialise, market youself, and suck up to the boss. You can’t just get a job, do it well, and be left alone. On the other side of the coin employers and fellow employees shouldn’t have to put up with unreliable or unstable colleagues that place further strain on them. Nothing about this is good for businesses, profits, workers, or mental health. The benefit system is tortorous by design and no one employable stays in it for long.
Seems strange for wartime spirit being involved by the political party responsible for the vast majority of problems this country currently faces
It’s really not that easy to get a WFH job, especially if you’re disabled and have limited experience. After four years of applying I’ve now got a job where one of my reasonable adjustments is that I’m allowed to WFH one day a week. Just the one. Obviously this would not be very useful for those who are so disabled they can’t leave the house at all.
Most entry level jobs are not work from home friendly. I worked an in-person job, on my feet for 8 hours a day, for three years in order to get the experience I needed for this job. Many couldn’t do that.
Why doesn’t the government do it’s duty to help people live happy and productive lives?
Why the focus on endlessly penalising everyone into submission.
Some people would be able to, some wouldn’t. Blanket policies like this are cruel, unfair and poorly thought out.
Trying. It’s not easy getting a remote job. I can only work part time outside of the home.
As a disabled person myself this hit home for me I have mixed feelings. I developed epilepsy after a fall a couple of years ago, currently I have a bad seizure at least once a week. My work have had to drop my working pattern from 5 days a week to 3 to accommodate my recovery time. My concern is I am still able to work but I’m earning 60% of what I was prior to the epilepsy, I’m also a burden on my work due to the unpredictable nature of my epilepsy and if I was ever to lose this job I can’t see any work place passing my probation as I’m a liability vs a non disabled worker. Tricky cause I’m able to work but also not very employable due to my disability. The stress of this also can cause my epilepsy to be worse so whilst I’m more than happy working health wise id probably be much better off being supported by the government and not working although I imagine id eventually lose my mind to boredom.
Ninja edit: I’m aware I can’t be sacked for things relating to my disability even whilst on probation but the reality is within your first two years you can be fired for whatever reason they like without any recourse.
So on one hand they want Civil Servants to come into the office but people who are unemployed should work from home. Make it make sense.
I wish I could, because I would love to be able to work again. My problem is that due to pain and other problems, I often have nights with hardly any or no sleep, and often have to sleep during the day. How can someone so as me ‘contribute’ if I have to ring my boss nearly every (other) day to say that I have had a bad night, and can’t work today? I don’t think that there are any bosses that would be able to put up with that.
They don’t have a duty, fuck off. The government has shown little to no duty to them.
The Tories want nothing more than for every individual to be worked like cattle, whilst they get to live in luxury. Nothing but heartless bastards.
Sounds great in theory. Unlikely to be administered with anything approaching consistency or compassion, more likely the blanket application of rules without any reference to individual situations.
Companies must employ disabled people and properly work with newly disabled employees in order to do their duty. The health service must properly diagnose and treat chronic illness in a timely fashion to ensure people can keep their jobs.
There. Fixed that for you.
When working habits changed because of the pandemic and more people started to WFH – the Government were dead against it. Then the penny dropped they could turn WFH into a home based poor house. They are properly despicable.
Yeah I love villifying the disabled. We should send them downt he mines, really.
Ahh yes, that famous Nelson quote: “England expects that every disabled person work from home to do their duty”.
Can’t wait for forced remote shelf-stacking to be a thing.
I’m sure that more people would work from home by choice if more opportunities to do so were available. A lot of companies that have work that can absolutely be done from home still insist on forcing people into an office though, so there would need to be some incentive to change that dynamic.
I’m not overly convinced that this government is the right one to push that though, given that mates of Tories are the ones that own a lot of office buildings which is why they went into a full on meltdown over people working from home during the pandemic.
Disabled people gotta do their duty for the country, but politicians’ only duty is to their paymasters.
My partner is disabled and is struggling to find a job that isn’t heavy lifting full stop. Ministers saying this doesn’t mean anything at all because they’re clearly not going to create a million let alone 100 WFH jobs for the disabled to do.
I’d gladly work from home it’s just finding a job, not a lot wants to hire those with disabilities, I’ve always been told not to mention it
It’d be good if these twats done a bit instead of just making speeches an stupid comments
I try to be balanced but this is just scummy as fuck, no details on any support to help people get to work, just threats and nationalist rhetoric.
This could be done in such a good way, help people get into work and have a better life but for them it has to be about punishment.
Stuff doesn’t normally get to me but this really has, fuck them and anyone who votes for them
Hey maybe the government could do their duty and stop being a bunch of incompetent scape goating con artists.
So are the government for WFH or against it? Or just when it suits the culture war of the week.
*Do your Duty*?
I can see that over a camp gate in the near future, what planet are these people on?
We’re having enough trouble finding things for fully able-bodied and neurotypical people to do these days, and it’s only going to get worse as more firms notice that ChatGPT *et al* is cheaper than a real person even if the quality of the work it does is barely-acceptable shite. What’s even the *point* of this, besides punching down on an easy target?
I used to employ a disabled man who had unpredictable energy / pain levels. He’d be able to work all day some days, not for days on end, for a few hours at a time. The particular job was suitable for adhoc workload.
That company went bust, and now the chap has found it impossible to find something else.
Realistically, most companies expect defined hours. The state either needs to incentivise flexible working for those with chronic illnesses as described, or needs to offer jobs themselves.
Whenever one calls HMRC there’s a huge queue – surely it would be better to offer jobs to those in the situation I’ve described. The worst that can happen is that they’re unavailable, which puts the queues in no worse position than they currently are 🤷♂️
typical Tory attack. Have a go at the disabled, immigrants and whatever group but never the rich who can afford accountants to make sure they pay little or no tax. Also appealing to the daily mail readers who regard anyone on benefits as a total waster and drain on the economy. When you will one of the lunatics propose lowering the school.leaving age to 8 to “help the economy and do their duty” This government is rapidly passing right wing and heading towards full blown fascism.
And what about people whose conditions fluctuate? What if you could do the job assigned to you on Monday, but Tuesday and Wednesday you were not well enough? What if that happened every single week (on different days, obviously)? What would an employer be expected to do about an employee who genuinely could not guarantee they would be fit for work at any given time?
So what happens when a person cannot afford to spend the money on the technology required to attend interviews remotely? What if they are living in rented accommodation and the lease bans them from working there? What about the people who are living in areas where the infrastructure is not good enough to support remote working? This is a terrible policy.
I don’t understand the governments position on this? They’re trying to force people back to the office AND then force disabled people to work (from home).
Either they’re stupid and inept and don’t realise there is an election looming or they’re just trying to piss absolutely everyone off. What is their end goal with all this? Because it certainly isn’t going to garner them votes, it’ll make them lose them. They’re not benefitting the masses and they’re not even benefitting themselves at this point. So strange…
Alright then I’ll bite, where are all the work from home jobs for the disabled – especially for those who have been out of work for a long long time or possibily never been in work.
Most jobs available to those with no work history are largely heavy manual work, shift work, driving work – all jobs which are going to be totally unsuitable for people claiming disability benefits who can’t work. People aren’t just going to walk into a job as an accountant or software engineer or a management role from home like that!
A lot of people who have worked who have mobility issues often did plenty of heavy manual work throughout their lives and are in their late 50s and now paying the price…
Also which categories of disabled people does this utter idiot think needs to “do their duty”? Where do we draw the line? Those with asbestosis and serious COPD? The terminally ill? People with learning difficulties? Non verbal adults with the mental age of infants?
As for those who want these people “in the office” or even in other workplaces, I take it they you will support laws to make them excempt from disciplinaries / dismissal if they keep going off sick or are regularly in hospitals and ensure all public transport runs 24/7 fully staffed with no barriers to access… (funny how the same Tories wanting the disabled in workplaces also want to axe all railway staff, cut the motability scheme and have crushed the bus network).
I will say that the WFH culture has started giving rise to these ‘well you can still work?’ discussions to even more able-bodied people. There’s no such thing as snow days anymore when your office is at home, inconvenient illnesses that don’t incapacitate you aren’t really great excuses anymore for not working – good at excusing yourself from the office these days but not anything else.
Even on training courses and conferences, you can be asked to keep your laptop with you in case you need to do some emailing etc. Great for management I suppose. We’re on the verge of being thrown out of our office with no replacement except for plant personnel and for the people that regularly come in the office, they’ll have to be dragged out kicking and screaming. Plant people loathe that WFH’ers have the flexibility to do stuff they can’t like putting the car in the garage, going shopping, literally any other irl stuff people these days love about working from home.
You can’t do that when you are that someone who needs to turn a valve or repair a bit of kit.
Make more remote working jobs available for the disabled then you bitch!
The only jobs they will have for WFH is call centre type jobs, am sure they will find some 1 armed person somewhere that can put a headset on their head and type one handed and say something like, this person is disabled and can do it so can everyone else.
Though I am quite sure they will make it sound so much more exciting to their SS style clientele.
‘Work from home’ isn’t just laying around with a laptop doing data entry. Most work from home jobs are still intense customer service type call centre roles that require you to be sitting at a desk 8 hours (or longer), using various complicated systems across multiple monitors. Plus you have to be meeting strict targets, remembering scripts and policies and dealing with complaints in a stressful fast paced environment.
Oh and you have to do that 5 days a week.
You can’t just assume that because a job is done at home that it can be done easily. I really think by ‘disability’ these people think it’s a case of being unable to walk or drive to an office and forgetting the sheer range and severity of different disabilities people suffer from.
Just shut the fuck up and stop harassing them.